Hornady Brass or Winchester Brass???

[MrBlu]

Hey y'all.

I'm just getting into reloading and Winchester brass was recommended to me, but I can't find any unfired/unprimed .308cal brass made by Winchester. I can find some Hornady Match brass, but that's it. I'm looking for precision, but not quite yet. I still need to practice reloading and see what kind of load my rifle likes.

I just bought some 150gr for reloading practice and don't expect it to be as accurate as I want it to be, but I don't want to put a lot of money into the brass if I don't have to.

Does anyone know if the price difference between Winchester regular brass and Hornady Match brass is a big difference??? Is match brass really only for matches/extreme range shooting???

I have a Remington SPS Tac. .308cal and I know I won't pass 1,000m accurately (read human size target or smaller) AND on a regular basis, without some really good weather.

Here is a link to just about the ONLY 308 brass I can find, without it being once fired or military.

Amazon.com: Hornady Unprimed 308 Winchester Match Cartridge Case: Sports & Outdoors

EDIT :

What about Nosler brass????

 

[Beluebow]

Go with lapua if ya can....Lapua

 

[Wireman134]

IMO and experience Win and Horn Match have same characteristics, i.e. case vol., weight, etc. They both allow greater case fill to get to optimum velocities for long range work. Use them for that purpose. LC LR is available or once fired LC for all other uses.
.308 LAKE CITY BRASS*ONCE FIRED 100 COUNT | MidsouthShootersSupply.com

 

[MrBlu]

As much as I would love to use such high quality brass, I'm just starting out and I still need to get the "muscle memory" of reloading and I don;t want to waste great brass on bad loads.

 

[280nosler]

If you are just getting started, buy some cheap brass, or email me and I'll send you some Remington once fired. If you want to keep the brass for a while, Lapua and Winchester are my favorites. Norma and PPU follow them up. I have used hornady, and while it is good, I found that after 5-6 firings with 4895, the primer pockets were loose, therefor they went in the trash. I am an honest believer in the pre-primed LC sold by midsouth. I use it I'm my scar with good success. That said, it is a little bit tougher to resize FYI.

I think you would be best served by using Winchester brass for its long life and ease in reloading.

 

[rdinak]

Lapua-comes ready to load, very consistent and last a long time.

Other wise go to walmart and buy 100 rounds of Winchester hunting ammo. Shoot the one hundred and then you have quality once fired brass formed to your chamber specs. Use the 100 rounds as bench marks for quality control and accuracy as you are learning to reload.Dont forget a reloading mentor as the most important tool on your bench.

 

[JGorski]

I'd buy the Lapua again. Sehr Gut!
Lapua Reloading Brass 308 Winchester Box of 100

 

[308Gunner]

+1 on the winchester brass it is not lapua but it is half the cost.

 

[Tempest 455]

My $.02 between the two.

The two have similar volume. Hornday is much more consitent in case weight. No big deal if you sort the Winchester. However, brass is softer on the Winchester.

 

[kraigWY]

I like Winchester brass, but I haven't tried reloading Hornady brass. I do have a case of Hornady Match Ammo in '06 (sold by the CMP) and it shoots pretty dern good. I'm interested in seeing what happens when I get around to reloading it. I see no reason why, if it works in loaded rounds it wouldn't work while reloading.

My understanding is in 308s Hornady loads in the neighborhood of 42 gr of 4064 with their 168 A Max bullet in their match 308s and its an outstanding load.

 

[Greg Langelius *]

I appreciate your concern about being a newb and not wanting to invest in soopahdoopah brass for your initial efforts. I think you make perfect sense.

Match brass is (usually) better, and will have a valid use for you once you've got your game together. Winchester is also good, plenty good enough for a beginner.

So is a lot of other brass, like Remington and Federal. Some ammo makers get their brass from out-of-house, and Hornady and Nosler may or may not be among them, depending on the chambering involved. My Hornady .280 Rem Superformance hunting ammo cases are marked Remington right on the headstamp, for instance. I use Remington a lot (.30-'06 and .280, for instance), and also Prvi-Partizan (PPU Headstamp) for my reloads (.223 and 7.62x54R).

Differences in brass are probably not going to be all that noticeable until pretty far down your road as you learn the reloading craft.

Military brass is often produced with crimped primers, and that crimp must be removed before repriming becomes possible. A lot of (US) Military Match brass is not crimped.

Some of the Eastern European ammo (TulAmmo, etc.) uses steel casings, but some of that (but very definitely not all, the box will say which) is also Boxer primed; I and some others here have had some success reloading the Boxer primed steel cases. Basically, I just clean, resize and reprime the cases, absolutely the same way I would with brass. The necks may need inside chamfering, or they can shave copper from bullet jackets as they are seated. I have used steel cases for .223 75gr match handloads, and they shoot just as well as my brass cases.

It's true that steel cases are harder than brass, otherwise they might not shave those bullets. But they are not all that hard, and I believe they can be used extensively with very, very little additional concern about rifle wear due to such casings. For instance, the steel cased Russian surplus 7.62x54R has been their standard machine gun round for roughly a century, and the Russians don't make bad guns or ammo; Cold War propaganda notwithstanding. If anything, those steel cases may actually make those machine guns more reliable.

I do not subscribe to buying one kind of ammo and shooting it solely to get brass for another kind of ammo. Ammo which is shot for no other reason than to get the brass wastes bore life and brass life. I would buy a collet bullet puller die set and simply harvest the components.

They can be recombined later in case there's a good purpose for that.

This tactic is one I use with the cheaper Eastern European steel cased ammo, especially with Russian Military "Spamcan" surplus. I just break it down and then reuse the primed cases with either the original components, recombined with more consistent assembly and more accurate load recipe, or with more modern powders and projectiles.

Simply recombining the original components using the published load recipe for the given source and year has yielded loads that shoot with under 3" of vertical at 200yd in my 91/30, and I haven't even started actual load development. Dispersion is a lot more even, and flyers are essentially not an issue. Not bad for a 70 year old rifle and 40 year old Russian MilSurp ammo components.

With a little extra effort and oblique thinking, that 'junk surplus' can be reassembled into some pretty accurate cannon fodder, and the average component cost becomes rather cheap. The Russian surplus powder burns very dirty, and the Berdan priming is corrosive, which requires an extra step in bore cleaning and also makes it necessary to do so within 24 hours or so of firing the rifle. But the bullets aren't all that bad, and the powder can be consistent enough to do decent load development with. I see my trio of Mosin-Nagant 91/30's as rock-bottom-cheap shooters, and strategies like this can help keep them so. A bit more attention to cleaning is well worth the savings.

Greg